Germany Opens First Stretch of a 60-Mile Bicycle Highway

Riding a bicycle is an experience in itself. It is all about enjoying nature while feeling like a kid, feeling the wind that blows through your hair, and is a simple pleasure for anyone who enjoys a bike ride.

For an uninterrupted bicycling experience…no red lights or vehicles, Germany has opened its first bicycle-only highway, the “bike autobahn.”

Image courtesy http://www.hochschwarzwald.de/

Bike autobahn is a 3-mile stretch that will eventually become a 100-km bicycle superhighway. It’s not like a standard bike lane which is simply separated by paint on the asphalt. This bicycle highway is a completely separate roadway with no worries of trucks or cars.

Authorities are planning to connect ten cities in the western part of Germany. To make the best of the existing infrastructure, abandoned railroad tracks will be transformed into a bicycle roadway in the Ruhr industrial region.

As per Local development agency RVR, this bicycle highway would provide a commuting route to over 2 million Germans, which in turn would result in 50,000 fewer cars on the road every day.

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. You can also find Nidhi on Google+.